Republican Pat Toomey took to the Senate floor Thursday and defended what he said was a mischaracterization of his words by New York Democrat Chuck Schumer.

Here's what Toomey had to say:

And by the way, a brief aside if I could about this debt limit issue because we had a discussion today in the Banking Committee. The Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke was there to testify, and it was a useful discussion. Unfortunately, after I left the committee, I learned later that Sen. Schumer began to discuss some of my remarks with Chairman Bernanke. And in the process, he grossly mischaracterized what I said.

Now, I'm quite sure that Sen. Schumer would never intentionally mischaracterize the remarks of one of his colleagues. So what I'd like to do is just clarify what was actually said so that in the future it won't be mischaracterized. I had observed that the Treasury will have more than enough cash coming in in the form of tax receipts to pay the interest on our debt in the event that we didn't raise the debt ceiling on Aug. 2. I immediately went on to say, and I will now quote myself, if you will allow. I said I don't know of anybody that suggests that we can or should go indefinitely without raising the debt ceiling. And I have argued that we would certainly be much better off reaching an agreement and raising the debt ceiling prior to Aug. 2. End quote. That was characterized by Senator Schumer as follows – and I will quote him. He said, ‘For a smart guy’ – he was referring to me, believe it or not, ‘to say we can pay the obligations, and not pay the rest, that’s just fine. Wow, I'm sort of surprised at it.’

Well, obviously, I never said it was just fine. What I have said is that we’ve got a dire crisis on our hands and we need to do something about it, and I don’t know that we're going to get another opportunity than the opportunity over this question of whether and when and by how much we'll raise the debt limit. But I’m not going to sit by idly and I'm not going to go along with some deal that raises the debt limit without making the real cuts in spending we need and the real process reform.